Lunch on Fridays: Marie Toledo + Scott Lax

Marie Toledo and Scott Lax

Spend your lunch hour hearing from Marie Toledo, a Lake Erie Native American Council member, who will be in conversation with Scott Lax, CIA Senior Professor of Practice in Liberal Arts, during Lunch on Fridays from 12:15 to 1:30pm Friday, September 20 in CIA's Peter B. Lewis Theater.

Toledo will discuss a range of topics, including issues that affect the Native American community and the bigger picture of modern indigenous culture; her work with the Cleveland Museum of Art on collaborations related to the Native American community; and the state of dance, art, music and politics regarding Native people in 2024.

Marie Toledo is a registered tribal member of the Jemez Pueblo, a federally recognized Indigenous tribe in New Mexico. She is a Cleveland-area Native, activist, speaker and advocate for the Cleveland American Indian community. She is a product of the federal government’s American Indian relocation program from the 1960s. Her parents were active at the beginning of the Cleveland American Indian Center and Cleveland American Indian Education program through Cleveland Public Schools from the 1960s through the 1980s. Toledo is a board member of the Lake Erie Native American Council, a local group working to preserve Native American culture. She directed the American Indian Festival from 1992 through 1999 in partnership with Cleveland Public Theatre, the Center for Contemporary Art and the City of Cleveland. Currently, Toledo sits on an advisory committee at the Cleveland Museum of Art and works with the Cleveland Cultural Gardens.

Scott Lax is an award-winning novelist, journalist and filmmaker, as well as a screenwriter and produced playwright and a Senior Professor of Practice in Liberal Arts at CIA. Lax is a recipient of a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Scholarship in Nonfiction, and Sewanee Writers Conference Fellowship in Fiction. The Denver Post named his first novel, The Year That Trembled, one of 1998’s "milestones in fiction." Lax then produced the feature film version of the novel, for which he was named Midwest Filmmaker of the Year by the 2002 Cleveland International Film Festival. Most recently, his play adaptation of the novel, 1970, was produced at the Chagrin Valley Little Theatre in 2023. Lax’s second novel, Vengeance Follows, was called "a minor masterpiece of suspense and human nature" by the Midwest Book Review. He has adapted that novel as a screenplay and is in development on the feature film version.

Parking: Lunch on Fridays attendees may park in any of CIA's Lot 73 and Annex Lot, both of which surround our campus. Please note that signs posted around those lots correctly state that parking typically requires a CIA permit or visitor pass and that violators will be ticketed. However, to accommodate our valued Lunch on Fridays attendees, that policy won't be enforced during the program. Have questions? Please contact Reinberger Gallery at reinbergergallery@cia.edu or 216.421.7407.

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